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A Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for graduation

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______________________________

______________________________

David E. Schweitzer, Ph.D.

Assistant Honors Director

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Abstract

This thesis will analyze the public relations of the British Royal Family as seen through the lens

of Timothy Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT). Coombs’ (2007) theory

provides a theoretical framework and guidelines for crisis response strategies when organizations

experience a crisis. This thesis will particularly evaluate the public relations of the British Royal

Family during the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death by examining primary artifacts such as

newspaper articles and public statements made by the organization and the public. Furthermore,

this thesis fills in the research gap regarding the evolution of the public’s perception of an

organization with the release of new information about the crisis.

Keywords: Timothy Coombs, situational crisis communication theory, crisis response,

crisis communication, British Royal Family, public relations

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Situational Crisis Communication Theory and the British Royal Family

The echoes of the British monarchy can be heard from all around the world. For

centuries, the British monarchy has stood, shaking and forming the world around it. However,

with grand influence and a blinding spotlight, come unbearable scrutiny and the demand for

speedy and precise communication in the face of catastrophe. The several events that have

required superior public relation tactics from the royal family are moments such as Princess

Diana’s death, Oprah’s telling interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and the

scandalous allegations towards Prince Andrew regarding his association with Jeffrey Epstein. It

is these defining moments for the British royals that will either make or deteriorate the reputation

of the monarchy. Particularly, the event of Princess Diana’s death and the public relation tactics

of the British Royal Family thereafter will be evaluated throughout this thesis as seen through the

lens of Timothy Coombs’ (2007) Situational Crisis Communication Theory.

Literature Review

Field of Crisis Communication and Defining Terms

Communication Theory. This emerging field of crisis communication has been broadening in

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Coombs (2007) defines a crisis as “an unpredictable event” that causes any level of

physical, financial, or psychological damage to its stakeholders, aka the public, and poses a

threat against the reputation of the company (as cited in Coombs & Holladay, 2010, p. 19). This

definition assumes that what negatively impacts the well-being of an organization’s stakeholders

will consequently form a reputational threat towards an organization. However, crisis

management informs organizations on how to prepare for, prevent, and react in a crisis to lessen

the potential damages done by such an event (Coombs & Holladay, 2010). Conversely, crisis

communication deals primarily with the communication messages that are carried out throughout

the crisis management process (Coombs & Holladay, 2010).

Overview of Situational Crisis Communication Theory

Coombs and Holladay (2010) posited that the field of crisis communication has been

infiltrated with case studies that suggest best practices in crisis response but has lacked any real

theoretical foundation. The Situational Crisis Communication Theory was developed in order to

bridge this gap and offer evidence-based theory to crisis managers (Coombs & Holladay, 2010).

Crisis Communication Theory was his article, “Choosing the Right Words: The Development of

management, “an underdeveloped area of crisis management is what organizations say to publics

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(crisis-response strategies)” following the crisis (Coombs, 1995, p. 447). This proposal initiated

the crisis-response strategy component that is central to Situational Crisis Communication

Theory.

The central concern that the Situational Crisis Communication Theory seeks to engage is

protecting the organization’s reputation when there is a crisis through post-crisis communication

(Coombs, 2007). Coombs describes his theory as “audience oriented” in that it focuses on the

audience’s response to a crisis and the communication messages used by the organization to

combat it (Coombs & Holladay, 2010, p. 38). Therefore, much of what SCCT lends itself to is

assessing the various factors that impact the organization’s reputation and then choosing the best

response strategies that will minimize damage done by the crisis. Next, a few terms will be

defined as to what impacts the reputational threat of a crisis.

The Components of Situational Crisis Communication

First, SCCT has many roots in Attribution Theory, which outlines how an individual tries

to make sense of a situation, event, or behavior by attributing responsibility to either

avoided and there is a sense of anger and frustration, or the organization is seen as the victim in

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In tandem with the Attribution Theory, SCCT shows that there is a further piece of the

puzzle. Not only do stakeholders attribute responsibility for a crisis and exhibit respective

emotions, but the crisis responsibility directly correlates to the level of reputational threat against

an organization. Therefore, the level to which stakeholders attribute responsibility will

subsequently estimate the organization’s reputational threat following the crisis before any

response strategies are put in place. The three factors that constitute the “crisis situation” and

calculate the reputational threat of a crisis are the initial crisis responsibility, crisis history, and

previous relationship reputation (Coombs, 2007, p. 166). Once crisis managers have evaluated

these three components to assess crisis threat, they will be able to identify the best response

strategy that will “maximize reputational protection” (Coombs, 2007, p. 166). Figure 1 illustrates

the concepts of SCCT and the theoretical connection between each component.

Figure 1

Theory Model

Note: Republished with permission of John Wiley & Sons, from The Handbook of Crisis Communication, Timothy Coombs and

Sherry Holladay, vol. 1, ed. 1, 2010; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

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The two-step process utilized to assess the crisis situation begins with calculating initial

crisis responsibility as measured by the specific “crisis type” (Coombs, 2007, p. 166). Coombs

describes that the crisis type acts as a frame that molds the public’s perception of who is at fault

for the incident (Coombs, 2007). The three crisis types are the victim cluster, accidental cluster,

and the intentional cluster (Coombs, 2007). Each crisis type corresponds to how much the

organization is held responsible for the crisis in the eyes of the stakeholders. In a victim cluster,

the organization is seen as the victim and therefore very little attribution, or initial crisis

responsibility, is assigned to the organization (Coombs, 2007). In an accidental cluster, the event

(Coombs, 2007, p. 167). However, in the intentional cluster, the crisis is seen as avoidable and

falls on the shoulders of human error (Coombs, 2007). Therefore, the organization is held much

more liable, and the initial crisis responsibility increases. The higher the level of crisis

responsibility assigned, based on the crisis type, directly correlates to a greater reputational

threat.

factors inflates the initial responsibility attributed to the organization (Coombs, 2007). If there is

are negative, it will directly impact how stakeholders attribute the crisis responsibility to the

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organization and therefore the reputational threat (Coombs, 2007). Therefore, all three factors of

the crisis situation - crisis type, crisis history, and prior relational reputation - must be considered

when establishing the degree of reputational threat and determining the best response strategy to

utilize.

The three different crisis response strategies that can be utilized by crisis managers are

“denial, diminish, and rebuild” (Coombs, 2006 as cited in Coombs, 2007, p. 170). Each have

their own factors and limitations and are dependent on the situational crisis factors. First, the

denial crisis response strategy focuses on removing all association with the accusations. This

may include denying that there is a crisis altogether or claiming that the organization had nothing

to do with it. These strategies, like crisis types, form a frame around the crisis and thus need to

be handled with care and close examination (Coombs, 2007). On the other hand, diminish

strategies attempt to make the crisis seem not as bad as it really is. In other words, the

organization assumes association with the crisis but avoids taking on all of the responsibility for

the event. Finally, rebuild strategies seek to rebuild the reputation and relationship with its

Theory Gaps and Contributing Research

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Family was unwilling to speak about the death of Princess Diana, the more negative the emotions

of the crowd grew as they felt they deserved an answer.

Finally, on September 5

, 1997, The Queen addressed the British citizens for the first

time, following a stroll in front of Buckingham Palace where she had viewed thousands of

flowers piling one on top of another. Fully clothed in black, the Queen stood in the Chinese

Dining Room looking directly at the camera. She immediately addressed the audience personally

stating, “so what I say to you now, as your Queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart”

(British Royal Family, 1997, para. 2). She described the Princess of Wales as an “exceptional

and gifted human being” who left an impact on the world and would never be forgotten (British

Royal Family, 1997, para. 2 & 3). The Queen also addressed the Princess’ two sons, Prince

William and Prince Harry, as trying to cope with their mother’s passing as they remained at

Balmoral Castle. Finally, the Queen thanked the public for their outpouring of love and declared

a call-to-action for the British people to be united during this time of grief.

The royals had decided to give Princess Diana a royal funeral despite her divorce from

late princess (Hardman, 1997, para. 11). The public outcry and hysteria demanded action from

decorating the streets (Morton, 2017). Additionally, the Queen bowed her head at the funeral

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procession as it drove by, carrying Princess Diana’s remains (Morton, 2017). This was quite a

statement, as the Queen, in all her years of royalty, never bowed to anyone. This gesture was a

symbol of admiration and utmost respect for Princess Diana.

The Public’s Response

The response from the public and from the media was a mix of emotions following the

Queen’s address at Buckingham Palace. One article published September 7, 1997, scrutinized the

royal’s traditional protocols and stone-cold emotions in the wake of the princess’ funeral. The

their rulers yesterday” but the royals “were unable to deliver” (Power, 1997, para. 8).

Those who were truly getting the blame and backlash of the public’s anger was the

British press, most notably for their exploitation of Princess Diana through the paparazzi’s

feverish stalking of the princess. A Gallup Poll conducted just one week following Princess

Diana’s death recorded the responses and opinions of British and American citizens, revealing

the true feelings of who was to blame for the accident. Forty-three percent of British citizens

through passing stronger laws (Saad, 1997). The reputational threat was more directed towards

sides to make various changes following the death of Princess Diana. Nevertheless, the royals

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were still met with criticism at their delayed response and rumors of conspiracy theories began to

circulate that still raise the ears of their listeners even today (Real Royalty, 2021, 1:49).

Discussion

The Queen’s response and public address following Princess Diana’s death was in line

with the culture and precedent of the British monarchy, though it was not well received by her

audience. In evaluating the response of the British Royal Family with that of SCCT, the crisis of

Princess Diana’s death would fall under the crisis type of a victim cluster, as the royal family

would be seen as the victim in this situation, having nothing to do with the crisis. However, some

of the conspiracy theories that accused the British Royal Family of planning Princess Diana’s

death leave for a questionable conclusion on how the public viewed the event.

Evaluating the Queen’s Response as Seen Through SCCT

What framed this crisis was the fact that the world viewed Princess Diana’s death as a

victim crisis type where the British Royal Family was seen as the victim of the incident. As

described previously, this means that the public attributed little to no blame of the passing to the

whether the monarchy had something to do with the death, this research assumes what the

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The next step in weighing the success of the royal’s public relation strategies according to

SCCT would be to calculate the “intensifying factors” of crisis history and prior relational

reputation as mentioned earlier. In regard to crisis history, the modern royal family had never

witnessed a catastrophe to this degree that would require this magnitude of crisis communication.

However, there had been several other crises that demanded a response from the Queen and the

family institution. These events include the incident of the Hillsborough Stadium collapsing,

which killed nearly 100 people in 1989, and the Marchioness cruiser sinking in 1989, where 51

people lost their lives (Lawerence-Jones, 2019; Morton, 2017; Tikkanen, 2022). Both incidents

demonstrated the same kind of initial lackadaisical response from the British monarchy (Morton,

2017). Thus, though the British Royal Family had not had the same event happen in the past,

their previously poor public relations weakened the relational reputation between the royals and

the public. According to Coombs’ formula, this weakened prior relational reputation would have

increased the reputational threat against the royals in the current crisis. Therefore, though the

event was a victim crisis type, the poor prior reputation when it came to crisis responses

(2007) wrote, “diminish crisis response strategies should be used for crises with minimal

can be either denying responsibility or denying that there is a crisis altogether (Coombs, 2007).

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Though the monarchy didn’t give a formal response, this sort of denial response strategy utilized

by the Queen was an unspoken and silent declaration to the people of Britain that communicated

that there was really no crisis at all. Coombs (2007) wrote that communication is necessary to

protect against the reputational threat posed by the crisis, and lack of communication would only

threaten the reputation of the institution that much more. Nonetheless, this is the primary

response strategy utilized by Queen Elizabeth and the rest of the British monarchy for the week

following Princess Diana’s death.

However, as discussed earlier and exemplified by British mass media, this denial strategy

did not perform well for the British people. Coombs and Holladay’s (2014) research is applied

here when examining this particular sequence of events. Their receiver-oriented approach to

analyzing the public’s response to crisis response strategies aids in the evaluation of the success

of British royals’ crisis communication as seen through the eyes of the public. Evaluating if the

crisis response strategies have led to positive reactions from the stakeholders and a decreased

reputational threat determines the success of crisis communication. According to the tabloids and

Thus, there came a shift on September 5

when the Queen gave her formal address to the

describe the situation that the royals were facing with the death of Princess Diana. It was sure

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that this event was something that had happened to the British Royal Family instead of

something that they could have prevented. Addressing the public, “as [their] Queen and as a

grandmother,” the Queen explained that the family had been consoling Diana’s two sons over the

past week as they mourned the loss of their mother (British Royal Family, 1997, para. 2). These

were uses of diminish response strategies as she tried to justify and affirm that her silence was

not because of a lack of caring for her people, but because she was first and foremost a

grandmother to two hurting boys. Queen Elizabeth II’s remarks on the admirable qualities of

Diana and the tribute that the Queen carried out for her stately funeral, were all ways that the

Queen acknowledged her people and her poor initial response, as she sought to restore the

reputation of the British monarchy.

Current-Day Ties to Previous Crisis Response Strategies

Nearly twenty-five years later, after all the dust of one of Britain’s greatest crises and

near public relations fails settled, new information regarding the British Royal Family broke out

from one of their own. Prince Harry opened up in an Oprah Winfrey interview with his wife,

streamed all over the internet. This interview between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and

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Though this interview gave a lot of telling insight into the British Royal Family, this

thesis is mainly concerned with how previous crisis response strategies impact present-day crisis

communication. The question that burns is whether the information that Prince Harry shared

about the death of Princess Diana and the experience he had in the aftermath of this event

changes the perceptions of stakeholders. The royal family released a public statement in

February of 2021 confirming that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had officially stepped down

as working members of the monarchy (Buckingham Palace, 2021, para. 1). Prince Harry

revealed that his “biggest concern was history repeating itself” (MsMojo, 2021, 6:33). Of course,

he was speaking on the paparazzi’s infringement on the personal life of his wife that, in the same

way, largely caused the misery and contributed to the ultimate death of his mother. Furthermore,

Family where the British press reports more favorably on the family if they are allowed more

access to their private lives (3:42). Prince Harry admitted that “there is a level of control by fear

that has existed for generations” within the royals’ relationship with the British press and the

Furthermore, the Oprah Winfrey interview was not the only avenue that the Duke and

greatly impacted by losing his mother and how he was unable to properly grieve her death

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(Vanderhoof, 2021). There has been a lot of scrutiny with how the young princes were made to

walk behind the carriage carrying their mother’s body in front of millions of viewers at such a

young age. Prince Harry’s personal accounts affirm some of the criticism the royals have

received in the past and may reignite those old, heated emotions that were originally dismantled

by the crisis response strategies used by the firm. This leads to the question of whether new

information that is revealed about a crisis demands new current-day responses from an

organization. It has already been discussed that crises have current-day effects, yet this could

further the research that past crisis response strategies may need to evolve in order to handle the

new information that comes out pertaining to the situation.

These questions and assumptions can be answered by evaluating how the public is

responding to this new revelation on channels, such as social media and other media outlets.

Furthermore, different public polls have been able to gauge the public opinion of the British

monarchy and that of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. According to a YouGov poll (Nolsoe,

2021), most people over the age of 65 dislike the Duke and Duchess, whereas the younger

evaluating the perceptions and potential reputational threat formed by new information

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Situational Crisis Communication Theory was developed to give an evidence-based

approach to crisis communication and research approved guidelines for an organization’s

communication messages following a crisis. The versatile theory identifies a crisis as anything

that causes “physical, financial, or psychological” hardship to its stakeholders and creates a

threat towards the reputation of the organization (Coombs & Holladay, 2010, p. 19). The threat

is a result of the various factors that surround the crisis situation, such as the degree to which the

organization is initially found responsible (initial crisis responsibility), the presence of past crisis

(crisis history), and the prior reputation the organization had before the crisis. Greater intensity

of the initial crisis responsibility, as well as the presence of the two intensifying factors, will

generate greater assumed crisis responsibility on the organization which leads to a higher

reputational threat. With greater assumed responsibility by stakeholders, higher emotions of

anger also contribute to the reputational threat and, eventually, how stakeholders plan to interact

with the organization in the future (behavioral intentions). It is due to this reputational threat that

SCCT suggests guidelines to help organizations minimize the negative outcomes of a crisis.

By analyzing the crises that have impacted the British Royal Family, SCCT can be

perceptions of the organization, given new information coming forward about the crisis. This

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was specifically evaluated with the death of Princess Diana and the new and emotional public

statements given by her son, Prince Harry, roughly 25 years following her death. This thesis has

demonstrated how the Situational Crisis Communication Theory can be universally applied and

how its guidelines are relative for any organization, culture, and generation.

Limitations and Future Research

Because the subject of this paper is the British Royal Family, a monarchy that has been

established for centuries, rather than a business firm, there are a few other components that could

contribute to the dependent factors of SCCT. The British Royal Family is a political governing

body as well as a group of public figures and therefore, factors that contribute to crisis

responsibility and reputational threat may look different than for a corporation. Furthermore,

stakeholders of the monarchy are national citizens that carry national bias and political opinions

that influence their view of the royals no matter what crisis response strategies are utilized.

Moreover, if it is true that there is an “invisible contract” between the British press and the royal

family, the personal bias of reporters creates an added medium that frames the crisis. This

Further research that could be conducted in the future is how conspiracy theories that

the Princess. Though there had been substantial evidence that these allegations could be true,